The New Commuters

Historian Liz McIvor looks at how the railways enabled us to live further and further from the places where we worked.

Before the age of steam, you would need a horse to travel long distances on land. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, our railways encouraged the development of suburbia inhabited by a new type of resident and worker - the commuter. In some cases, new places emerged on the map simply because of the railways - towns like Surbiton.

Liz visits London and the south east of England, our nation's largest commuter zone. The Victorian rail network was never part of a single grand plan, but emerged and evolved, line by line, over decades. For today's commuters, work is still going on to create a system that serves their needs.